Archlife #14 …Lubetkin’s Six Pillars

It was designed in 1932 and built in 1934 for the Rev Jack Leakey and his wife whilst Leakey was headmaster of the nearby Dulwich College Preparatory School.

Soon afterwards Lubetkin, a Russian émigré fired with a revolutionary belief in the liberating power of modernist design, built the first modernist high-rise block in the UK – Highpoint in Highgate – as well as the much loved penguin house in the London Zoo.

In their book Lubetkin & Tecton: An Architectural Study, Malcolm Reading and Peter Coe write of the house:

Perched on six pilotis the main façade is cool and urbane, with references to Le Corbusier’s Garches and Planeix villas.

The familiar Tecton ingredients of expressed structural frame, snug planning and informal living spaces appear. [The house is] much loved and well cared for.